Source: Iran Heritage Foundation
Book Launch and lecture by Dr. Michael Barry
Organised by: Iran Heritage Foundation and Diane de Selliers Publishers.
6.30pm, Monday 17th February 2014
Asia House, 63 New Cavendish Street, London W1G 7LP
Introduction
The Persian poet ‘Attâr, from Neishâbûr in modern north-eastern Iran (1158–1221), was Rûmî’s acknowledged spiritual model and himself one of the greatest literary masters of medieval Sufism. Through the wizardry of his poetic evocations, the emotional beauty of his language, his musicality and power of expression, ‘Attâr succeeds in uttering the unutterable, shows what cannot be seen, and shares with his readers a spiritual experience on a par with the most exalted verses of Rûmî and Kabîr and, in other traditions, of Saint Francis and Dante, John of the Cross and Henry Vaughan.
The Canticle of the Birds, a masterpiece of Persian literature written in the twelfth century, The is the poetic expression of a universal initiatory quest, that for Love, Truth and Unity. The journey of the birds beyond the seven valleys to meet Simorgh, the legendary bird and allegory of the Supreme Being, symbolises the voyage of every human soul.
More than two hundred Persian, Turkish, Afghan and Indo-Pakistani works, chosen from the most beautiful manuscripts of the fourteenth to seventeen centuries – from the banks of the Bosphorus to those of the Ganges – complement the poem. The choice of works benefited from the inestimable contribution of Michael Barry, art historian, professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and eminent specialist in the civilisations of the East.
